Advocacy means going on the record. Since 2002, JIMENA has brought the history, lived experiences, and perspectives of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to policy makers, international bodies, and the public. Through statements, letters, and policy responses, we advocate on issues affecting our communities and Jews worldwide - from education and antisemitism to cultural heritage, Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and international affairs. These statements show where we stand, what we've advocated for, and why.
Advocacy means going on the record. Since 2002, JIMENA has brought the history, lived experiences, and perspectives of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to policy makers, international bodies, and the public. Through statements, letters, and policy responses, we advocate on issues affecting our communities and Jews worldwide - from education and antisemitism to cultural heritage, Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and international affairs. These statements show where we stand, what we've advocated for, and why.
Cultural Property Rights The Iraqi Jewish Archive and Jewish Cultural Property Rights Protecting Jewish heritage must include the rights of the communities that created and preserved it. Last reviewed October 2026 For many Jews who fled or were expelled from countries across the Middle East and North Africa, displacement meant losing not only homes and livelihoods, but also sacred objects, communal records, and the material evidence of generations of Jewish life. These losses continue to raise questions of ownership, access, and restitution for Jewish communities and their descendants. JIMENA advocates for the rights of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa to their confiscated cultural property. Our work addresses the Iraqi Jewish Archive, U.S. cultural property agreements, and the broader responsibility to protect Jewish heritage without legitimizing the dispossession of the people to whom it belongs. “Forced displacement should not sever a community’s rights to its heritage.” Our guiding principle The Iraqi Jewish Archive A community’s history recovered On May 6, 2003, American soldiers discovered thousands of Jewish books and documents submerged in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. The collection, which became known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive, included more than 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents. The surviving materials offer an extraordinary record of Iraqi Jewish life. Religious books, school records, correspondence, and communal documents reveal the institutions, relationships, and everyday experiences of a community whose history in the region stretches back more than 2,500 years. The collection also contains records relating to the citizenship laws and restrictions that shaped the lives of Iraqi Jews during the twentieth century. With the agreement of Iraqi representatives, the water damaged materials were brought to the United States for preservation. The National Archives and Records Administration and its partners undertook extensive conservation, cataloging, and digitization, making this history accessible to people around the world. The preservation project contemplated returning the physical materials to Iraq. For JIMENA, the central question is not only where the collection can be preserved, but whose rights must guide decisions about its future. Returning confiscated Jewish materials to a government is not the same as restoring them to the Jewish families, schools, synagogues, and communal institutions from which they were taken. Preservation and online access, however valuable, do not resolve the questions of ownership and restitution. JIMENA’s position Any resolution concerning the Iraqi Jewish Archive must recognize the rights of the Iraqi Jewish community and its descendants. Their relationship to these materials should be central, not incidental, to decisions about custody, access, and long term stewardship. U.S. cultural property agreements Why these agreements matter The Iraqi Jewish Archive’s preservation and custody arrangements are distinct from the U.S. agreements that govern imports of cultural property. Both, however, raise an important question: how should governments protect cultural heritage when the communities that created it have experienced persecution, confiscation, and displacement? Under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, the United States can enter into agreements with other countries to restrict imports of designated archaeological and ethnological materials threatened by pillage. These agreements, often called Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs), are intended to combat illicit trafficking and protect cultural heritage. They operate through specified categories of objects and defined date ranges, not a blanket prohibition on everything associated with a country. For covered materials, U.S. law requires export documentation or other legally accepted evidence that permits their importation. Objects lacking that documentation can be detained and become subject to seizure and forfeiture. Designated materials forfeited for violating these import restrictions are first offered for return to the relevant foreign state. An MOU does not, by itself, transfer ownership of every covered object to a foreign government. But its implementing restrictions can have serious consequences for where an object may go and whether it can reach a displaced community. This is why JIMENA has called for explicit protections for Jewish and other minority cultural property in U.S. agreements with countries across the region. JIMENA supports protecting cultural heritage from theft, destruction, and trafficking. That protection should also account for histories of state confiscation and persecution. Governments should not be treated as the only legitimate representatives of heritage created by communities whose rights they have violated. “Jewish heritage can be part of a country’s history without Jewish owned property automatically becoming the property of its government.” Where things stand Important protections and continuing gaps Some U.S. cultural property rules now explicitly exclude certain Jewish materials. These provisions show that agreements can include specific protections for Jewish heritage. Other restrictions continue to raise concerns. Libya Protection The 2023 renewal excludes Jewish ceremonial and ritual objects from its ethnological restrictions. Yemen Protection The 2024 rules exclude Jewish ceremonial or ritual objects and manuscripts from their ethnological categories. Morocco Protection The rules, renewed in 2026, expressly exclude Jewish ceremonial or ritual objects from ethnological coverage. Türkiye Gap The designated list expressly includes Kiddush cups, Torah pointers, and Torah finials. In May 2026, the United States extended the restrictions through March 24, 2031, keeping the existing list. The scope of these protections matters. Exclusions for particular ethnological categories should not be mistaken for blanket exemptions for all Jewish cultural property, nor do they resolve ownership or restitution claims. JIMENA calls for clear, consistent protections rather than leaving the treatment of Jewish cultural property to varying language from one agreement to another. The experiences and rights of displaced communities must inform both the negotiation of agreements and their enforcement. Our advocacy What JIMENA advocates 1. Recognition of ownership and meaningful restitution Confiscation and forced displacement should not extinguish the rights of Jewish individuals, families, and communal institutions. Decisions about Jewish cultural property should examine how objects changed hands, recognize legitimate ownership claims, and support restitution rather than defaulting to government possession. 2. A meaningful role for affected communities Jewish communities and their descendants should participate in decisions about their heritage. Their knowledge of an object’s history, religious significance, ownership, and use is essential to responsible policy and stewardship. 3. Explicit safeguards in cultural property agreements U.S. agreements and their implementing restrictions should include clearly defined protections for the cultural property of Jewish and other persecuted minority communities. JIMENA has called for specific exclusions for Jewish and Christian materials rather than relying on assumptions that their interests will be protected by broader national heritage claims. 4. Preservation, transparency, and access Governments seeking recognition and protection of cultural heritage should document what remains, explain how it is being conserved, and provide meaningful access to affected communities. Preservation commitments should address both movable objects and the synagogues, cemeteries, and other sites that hold communal memory. Conservation does not replace restitution. Digital access does not resolve ownership. Protecting an object should not mean disregarding the people whose history, faith, and family life give it meaning. Voices from the Archive Opening the Iraqi Jewish Archive to new generations JIMENA serves as the fiscal sponsor of Voices from the Archive, a project created by David Breslauer that makes the digitized Iraqi Jewish Archive easier to search, read, and explore. The project uses AI assisted transcription and draft translation to help families, researchers, and community members discover material within the collection. The National Library of Israel partners with the project in stewarding the digitized archive and supporting public access. Visitors can explore historical documents and photographs, search for family names and institutions, and compare transcriptions and translations with the original archival images. Because AI generated text can contain errors, important names, dates, and interpretations should be checked against those images. For families separated from this history by displacement, distance, or language, these tools offer new opportunities to reconnect. Explore Voices from the Archive → Learn more The National Archives Preservation Project → Discover how the Iraqi Jewish Archive was recovered, conserved, cataloged, and digitized, and explore the materials featured in the National Archives’ exhibition. JIMENA Statements and Policy Submissions → Read JIMENA’s testimony, correspondence, and policy positions concerning Jewish cultural property and the rights of displaced communities. Contact JIMENA → For policy inquiries, research partnerships, or information about our cultural property advocacy, contact JIMENA. Press and policy inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org
My name is Gina Bublil-Waldman and I am the cofounder and President of JIMENA, an organization created to protect the heritage and rights of formerJewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. I was born in Tripoli, Libya, from which I, my family, and the entire Jewish community were brutally ethnically cleansed and our properties confiscated in 1967. The driver of the bus my family escaped on attempted to kill me and my family by pouring gasoline on the bust and attempting to set it on fire. It is thanks two British Christians that I survived and am able to speak to you today. Your committee was established to review MOU requests and determine if they curb the looting of antiquities. In this case, the government of Libya is the looter. Libyan authorities looted all our Jewish religious artifacts and our private and communal property. The Libyan government desecrated all of our holy sites and converted all of our synagogues into mosques. UNLESS THE LANGUAGE IN AN MOU EXPLICITLY EXCLUDES JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ITEMS, THE CURRENT MOU, AS WRITTEN, LEGITIMIZES THE LIBYAN GOVERNMENT’S CONFISCATION OF WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS. IT MAKES THEM, THE LOOTERS, THE CUSTODIANS OF OUR PATRIMONY. On behalf of JIMENA, which represents Libyan Jews in exile, we respectfully ask this committee to carve out exceptions for Jewish religious artifacts and properties which were confiscated from the Libyan Jewish community when we were brutally expelle . Such carve-outs have been exercised with the Moroccan Government where there were clear exclusions of Jewish items with respect to the MOU. To conform uniformly, this precedent must be copied in all other MOUs with Middle Eastern countries that have also confiscated Jewish communal patrimony when Jews fled antisemitic persecution. We request that CPAC include carve-outs that list and name ANY AND ALL specific Jewish and Christian items to BE EXCLUDED from the restricted list . \\including Torah Scrolls, prayer books, Jewish Manuscripts, Torah pointers, menorahs, mezuzahs, Kiddush cups and any and all Jewish ceremonial objects.\\ The Dar Bishi Synagogue, where my family worshipped has been stripped of its ceremonial objects, desecrated, and is currently being converted into an Islamic Center. In my submitted testimony you will find a link to a video showing the conversion of the synagogue. I urge you to watch this desecration. The Libyan authorities imprisoned the person who sent us this video to 8 months in jail just for reporting it. THE LIBYAN AUTHORITIES HAVE ETHNICALLY CLEANSED US, ROBBED US OF OUR ASSETS, DESECRATED ALL OUR SYNAGOGUES, and RAISED OUR CEMETERIES TO BUILD SKYSCRAPERS. WE IMPLORE CPAC NOT TO MAKE THEM THE CUSTODIANS OF OUR PATRIMONY . THE CPIA CREATED LAWS TO GUIDE THIS COMMISSION TO ENSURE THAT MINORITIES RIGHTS ARE PROTECTED AS WELL AS THEIR CULTURAL PATRIMONY – WE BEG YOU TO ADHERE TO THESE LAWS.
Dear Secretary Blinken: We are writing on behalf of JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, a San Francisco, CA based organization representing the heritage and rights of the one million Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) who fled religious persecution or were ethnically cleansed from the region from the 20th century until today. On behalf of our members I would like to extend our congratulations on your confirmation as Secretary of State and look forward to working with you to promote and defend the American values of freedom of religion, expression, and rule of law. Since 2018, a coalition of 18 leading Jewish organizations including: Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, B’nai Brith International, World Jewish Congress, and Simon Wiesenthal Center have publicly called on the U.S. State Department to encourage the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to explicitly recognize the rights of Jewish and minority heritage when negotiating cultural property agreements with countries in North Africa and the Middle East. On multiple occasions we specifically requested that Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) originating in North Africa and the Middle East include provisions that list and name specific Jewish and Christian items to be excluded from the restricted list of items to be brought in the United States. We also requested that the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Heritage adheres to the limitations set by Congress under the Cultural Property Implementation Act by denying broad, excessive import restrictions to nations that have neither valued nor cherished the ancient heritage of Jewish, Christian, and other minority peoples. It is in this same vein that we request that any regulations to implement the Turkey MOU be frozen or suspended until such time as Turkey recognizes and respects the religious freedom and property of minority populations. As you know, immediately after his inauguration on January 20th President Biden issued a Memorandum to all Executive Departments and Agencies placing a freeze on any pending rule or regulation issued by the Trump Administration. President Biden’s freeze has been necessitated by the Trump Administration’s effort to continue to improperly direct US policy after he has left office. One of these ill-conceived measures, signed on January 19th, Trump’s last day in office, was a cultural property agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Erdogan Regime in Turkey. That MOU provides de-facto recognition to that government’s claims to the personal and communal property of that nation’s religious Jewish and Christian minorities. In fact, the Turkey MOU is consistent with a series of Trump Administration MOUs with authoritarian governments in Libya, Algeria, Jordan, and Yemen that recognize state ownership of all personal and communal property of displaced religious minorities. These MOUs have been contrary to the values of our nation and fail to serve their stated goal of protecting cultural property. We also request that you suspend the Trump Administration’s MOU with Yemen’s Saudi-supported government as part of the Biden Administration’s disengagement with the Saudi led war in Yemen. The current MOU with Yemen turns a blind eye to not only that government’s claims over Jewish religious property, but to its complicity in the shelling and bombing of Yemen’s own cultural heritage into dust. Hopefully, a freeze on any implementing regulations for the MOU with Turkey and a suspension of the MOU with Yemen will be an important first step towards ascertaining whether all Trump Administration MOU’s with authoritarian MENA governments can be reformed to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities to their own property. Thank you, Executive Director of JIMENA, Sarah Levin President of JIMENA, Gina Bublil-Waldman C.C. Chair The Cultural Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Stefan Passantino Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs Assistant Secretary, Marie Royce House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Gregory Meeks Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Chairman, Bob Menendez Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad Chairman, Paul Packer JIMENA Letter on Turkey MOU
To Mr. Jeremy Sabloff and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the U.S. Department of State: We submit these comments to you on behalf of JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. JIMENA is one of the few organizations in North America representing the interests of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East. For context, Mizrahi Jews are an indigenous Middle Eastern population, whose ancestors lived continuously in the region for over 2,500 years. In the mid 20th century until today, state-sanctioned antisemitism led to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of close to one million Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from countries throughout the region – including Yemen. 650,000 of these Jews fled to Israel as stateless refugees and the remainder scattered to countries around the world, including the USA. Today, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population. This past December, a coalition of 18 leading Jewish organizations including: Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, B’nai Brith International, World Jewish Congress, and Simon Wiesenthal Center publicly called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to encourage the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to explicitly recognize the rights of Jewish and minority heritage when negotiating cultural property agreements with countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In our letter to Secretary Pompeo, we specifically requested that Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) originating in North Africa and the Middle East include provisions that list and name specific Jewish and Christian items to be excluded from the restricted list of items to be brought in the United States. We also requested that the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Heritage adheres to the limitations set by Congress under the Cultural Property Implementation Act by denying broad, excessive import restrictions to nations that have neither valued nor cherished the ancient heritage of Jewish, Christian, and other minority peoples. The letter to Secretary Pompeo is below and our requests, within the context of MOUs originating in the Middle East and North Africa, remain consistent. On July 31st, 2018, during a public hearing for the Request of the Government of the People’s Republic of Algeria for U.S. import restrictions on virtually the entire cultural heritage of Algeria, representatives of exiled Middle Eastern Jews urged the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to withhold these import restrictions – but it seems these requests were ignored. Algeria failed to meet the criteria set for restrictions under the Cultural Property Implementation Act and we were surprised that the United States gave the Algerian government authority and control over the property of its oppressed and exiled Jewish and Christian citizens. We hope our requests today will be considered and we are prepared to take more significant steps to protect our cultural heritage and bring awareness to how through the MOU process, the human rights of religious minorities from the Middle East and North Africa is being violated. An MOU with Yemen is based on a flawed premise – that Jewish cultural property constitutes the national heritage of the Yemeni government. In fact, under the color of law, Jewish cultural property in Yemen was expropriated from private homes, schools, and synagogues. For decades, Jews in Yemen faced terrible state-sanctioned antisemitic persecution including forced conversions to Islam, violent pogroms, and restrictions to freedom of movement. Within the last ten years, the Jewish community of Yemen has faced deadly antisemitic persecution leading to the exodus of Yemen’s remaining Jewish families. The International Council of Museum’s Red List for Yemen specifically included Torah scrolls as part of the cultural heritage Yemen seeks to take ownership of, which is deeply problematic. Unlike other endangered archeological items that CPAC is trying to protect, Torah scrolls are not a national cultural relic of any government – but are an integral, living element of Jewish heritage, and belong in the custody of Jewish communities. If this committee truly cared about protecting cultural property it would advocate a position of returning Yemeni Torah scrolls to Yemenite Jewish communities who are certainly the best caretakers of their living cultural property. We ask you, how can a country that severely violated the human rights of its Jewish people, and is currently embroiled in famine and war, be entrusted to serve as responsible owners and custodians of Jewish cultural property? We find it abhorrent that a country whose antisemitic policies, and inability to protect its Jewish people, would now like to claim legal ownership over confiscated Jewish communal property. By signing an MOU with Yemen that does not include provisions that list Torah scrolls, and other Jewish items, to be excluded from import restriction lists, this committee is complicit in Yemen’s antisemitic crimes. MOUs demand that the governments themselves show they are taking measures to preserve and protect the heritage in their own countries and Yemen should be asked to present an inventory of remaining Jewish moveable and non-movable patrimony and an account of what they are actively doing with respect to the care of synagogues, cemeteries and other sites and items of Jewish and Christian heritage. Sadly, we know the Yemeni government is complicit in the bombing and shelling of cultural sites, including museums, and has done nothing to preserve the remnants or memory of Jewish history from Yemen. These MOUs claim to be about looting, but their broad scope and limited evidence of success suggests their impact is providing a legal vehicle to legitimize foreign confiscations and wrongful ownership claims. Proponents of import restrictions point to looting of museums, but such material is already subject to detention and seizure under the National Stolen Property Act. Furthermore, U.S. imports from Yemen indicate that the U.S. is not a destination for looted or stolen material. Legitimate efforts to curb looting in Yemen and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa are essential, but must be targeted to preserve archaeological resources, and not to disguise the brazen property confiscations of antisemitic governments. We close by voicing our frustration that the Cultural Property Advisory Committee accelerated the timeline for action on Yemen’s MOU request, thus minimizing the opportunity for the Jewish community and others to oppose it. The call for public comment was made during the Jewish High Holidays, exhibiting insensitivity towards Jewish people and institutions who care deeply about this issue. We hope that your committee will take the concerns and requests of the Jewish community seriously. Thank you, Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA Gina Bublil-Waldman, President, JIMENA C.C. Honorable Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs Assistant Secretary, Marie Royce House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Eliot Engel Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Chairman, Jim Risch Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad Chairman, Paul Packer Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Elan Carr
The Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the U.S. Department of State has been signing Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) agreements with foreign governments that blockade the entry of cultural property to the USA and deny Jews and Christians from Arab countries the rights to their historic heritage. Through the MOU process, our government is transferring ownership of confiscated Jewish property to various Arab governments that expelled or forced their Jewish populations to flee antisemitic persecution under duress. Despite the protestations of Jewish communal organizations, including; ADL: The Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, B’nai Brith International, Simon Wiesenthal Center, World Jewish Congress of North America, and many others, MOU agreements have been signed with Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Syria. The signing of the MOUs is done under the auspices of The Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA). This law provides for the US to enter into agreements with foreign nations to temporarily restrict the import of “significant” cultural items as part of a multi-nation effort to deter looting of ancient archeological sites. Over time the State Department has broadened the scope of the law to provide for “near permanent” bans on the import of ALL cultural items to the present time. The MOUs recognize those nation’s claims and seizures of all cultural property, including the personal property of individuals and the communal property of religious and ethnic groups. The MOUs are based on a flawed premise – that Jewish cultural property constitutes the national heritage of Arab governments. In fact, under the color of law, Jewish cultural property in Arab countries was expropriated from private homes, schools, and synagogues. It is the heritage and patrimony of the Jewish people. Arab governments have done little to preserve the remnants or memory of Jewish history in the countries and verified reports describe Jewish synagogues, pilgrimage sites, homes, and cemeteries being looted and destroyed. Jewish holy sites throughout the Middle East and North Africa have been appropriated and many demolished. TAKE ACTION: Yemen and Morocco MOU Request Hearings, October 29th – 30th, 2019 ACTION REQUIRED NOW! The Cultural Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is the governing body responsible for signing MOU agreements. The committee will meet on October 29th – 30th, 2019 to review MOU requests from Yemen and Morocco. The public may participate by submitting comments virtually, by submitting written comments and/or by participating in person. To participate in the virtual open session: The public may participate in the virtual open session of the meeting on October 29, 2019, from 1:30 to 2:30 pm EDT, using Zoom. Anyone may participate. Please RSVP by October 15th to participate in the virtual session by contacting the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at culprop@state.gov. To submit written comments: Use regulations.gov, enter docket DOS-2019-0031, and follow the prompts to submit written comments. To participate in person: If you wish to participate in the open session at the meeting, you must request to be scheduled by October 23, 2019, via email (culprop@state.gov) in order to be guaranteed a slot. Please submit your name and organizational affiliation in this request. After you pre-register, you will be provided with instructions on how to participate. For more information on how to participate, click here. General Talking points for public comment, op-eds & communication with elected officials The State Department has accelerated the timeline for action to minimize the opportunity for the Jewish community and others to oppose this action. The call for public comment was made during the Jewish High Holidays. MOUs with Arab governments are based on a flawed premise – that Jewish cultural property constitutes the national heritage of Arab countries. In fact, Jewish cultural property in Arab countries was expropriated from private homes, schools, and synagogues. MOUs claim to be about looting, but their broad scope and limited evidence of success suggests their real impact is providing a legal vehicle to legitimize foreign confiscations and wrongful ownership claims of confiscated Jewish property. Legitimate efforts to curb looting are essential, but they must be targeted to preserve archaeological resources, and not to disguise the brazen cultural property confiscations of Jewish and Christian communities throughout the region. We ask that the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Heritage adheres to the limitations set by Congress under the Cultural Property Implementation Act by denying broad, excessive import restrictions to nations that have neither valued nor cherished the ancient heritage of Jewish, Christian, and other minority peoples. MOUs from the Middle East should include provisions that list and name specific Jewish and Christian items to be excluded from the restricted list of items. The proposed MOUs would legitimize Arab government’s confiscation of Jewish Communal Property. A Red List from Yemen outlines the cultural property the government seeks to take ownership of and it includes Torah scrolls. MOUs demand that the governments themselves show they are taking measures to preserve and protect the heritage in their own countries and the Yemeni government is complicit in the bombing and shelling of cultural sites, including museums. Yemen should be asked to present an inventory of remaining Jewish moveable and non-movable patrimony and an account of what they are actively doing with respect to the care of synagogues, cemeteries and other sites and items of Jewish and Christian heritage. U.S. imports from Yemen indicate that the U.S. is not a destination for looted or stolen material. Proponents of import restrictions point to looting of museums, but such material is already subject to detention and seizure under the National Stolen Property Act. Article 17 of the U.N Declaration of Human Rights states that no individual or community should be arbitrarily deprived of their property. Therefore, the United States should not enter into any agreement, and should withdraw from any existing agreements, with a foreign state that either condones, supports or promotes any Article 17 violation by that state. If you are former Jewish refugee from an Arab country, or the descendant of one you are encouraged to speak from a compelling, emotional place and share your family story and perspective. What did you or your family leave behind? What does it mean to you that a government who failed to protect your rights is now laying claim to your property? For more information Jewish Communal Letter to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo Regarding Cultural Property Agreements Letter to Secretary of Treasury, Steven Mnuchin Regarding Yemen Emergency Import Restrictions Yemen’s Red List of cultural property they seek to take ownership of – including Torah scrolls Cultural Property Observer, Short Comment Period for Proposed MOU’s with Morocco and Yemen Yemeni Jews arrested for allegedly helping to smuggle Torah to Israel: report Pattern of Abuse: Iraqi Jewish Archive & MOUs
Dear Secretary Mnuchin: We strongly urge you to rebuff those supporting, promoting and legitimizing Arab governments’ seizure of the property and patrimony of the Jewish people. All across the Middle East and North Africa Jews, who had resided in the region for millennia, either fled or were expelled by the Arab rulers of these nations. Their property, both individual and community, was seized. In recent years, U.S Department of State actions have unfortunately enabled the seizure of Jewish property by these governments. In 2018 an agreement was signed with Libya, whose Jewish population fled with only suitcases of possessions, that failed to recognize Libyan Jewry’s claims to their patrimony. Also in 2018, Algeria, a state that denied its Jewish population citizenship upon independence and converted synagogues to mosques, proposed an agreement. These agreements have moved forward under the camouflage of deterring looting despite the lack of hard evidence that these agreements are effectively addressing a real problem. In simple terms, this is a case of an agenda in search of a problem. Today, the target is Yemen and you are being urged to enact Emergency Restrictions on the import of cultural property from that nation. These proposed restrictions would effectively recognize the Yemen regime’s ownership claims to all that region’s cultural property, including Jewish patrimony. Proponents are advocating this approach despite the uncontested evidence that the real threat to these cultural artifacts is the documented daily destruction and ruin from the bombing campaigns of that government and its allies. Rather than condemning that government’s unprecedented historic disregard for cultural heritage, some advocates and Congress members have launched a campaign urging you to endorse the Yemeni regime’s claims to Jewish property by enacting Emergency Restrictions. This campaign has misrepresented import statistics to justify the request for Emergency Restrictions, while releasing of a “Red List” that directly targets Jewish ceremonial items. Make no mistake, the Yemeni regime views the property of Yemen’s ancient Jewish community, which fled to Israel on Operation Magic Carpet, as Yemeni government property. That Yemeni government arrested a Rabbi for bringing a Torah to safety in Israel, claiming that Torahs are government property. The United States must not endorse or legitimize this wrong. We urge you not to facilitate this seizure of Jewish patrimony and not impose Emergency Restrictions. Gina Waldman, President, JIMENA Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA
(JTA) — Eighteen Jewish groups urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to exclude Jewish artifacts when making import restriction agreements with countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In a letter sent Tuesday to Pompeo, the organizations expressed worry that deals meant to curb looting would prevent Jews now living in the United States from retrieving personal and community belongings from their countries of origin. Jews were forced out of countries in the Middle East and North Africa amid heavy persecution following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The letter was organized by Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, or JIMENA, and signed by organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the World Jewish Congress North America. It calls on Pompeo to ensure “that a policy is in place that protects Jewish and Christian heritage by explicitly excluding them from any import restrictions and rejecting any state claims to individual and communal property.” The letter references an import restriction request by Algeria that the State Department is currently considering. Last year, JIMENA protested an agreement that the U.S. reached with Libya, saying it did not exclude Jewish artifacts. The State Department later told JTA that certain Jewish artifacts were exempt from the deal.BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN
Dear Secretary Pompeo, On behalf of the undersigned Jewish organizations we are writing to encourage the State Department and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to explicitly recognize the rights of Jewish and minority heritage when negotiating future cultural property agreements with countries in North Africa and the Middle East. During the 20th century, 850,000 indigenous Jews from the region were ethnically-cleansed or forced to flee lands their ancestors lived in for over two-thousand years. Virtually all of their personal and communal property was confiscated. The dispossession and denationalization of nearly one million Jewish refugees was done under the color of law and today there are very few Jews remaining in most of these countries. The State Department has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) between the United States and other governments that deny Christians and Jews from Arab countries the right to their historic heritage. The Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) was enacted to deter the looting of archeological sites by enacting temporary import restrictions on significant cultural items as part of a multilateral effort. Unfortunately, over time these restrictions have expanded beyond both the law’s intent and its legal authority. We recognize the importance of these MOU agreements in deterring the pillaging of archaeological and ethnological materials. However, an additional goal of these agreements, as noted in the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, is to, “increase international access to cultural property.” This has a particular relevance with regard to Jewish heritage, which encompasses both moveable (e.g., Torah scrolls, ritual objects, libraries, communal registers) assets and immovable (e.g., synagogues, cemeteries, religious shrines) assets. Regrettably, it is not safe – and in many cases forbidden by national law – for Jewish refugees from Arab countries to return to the countries that exiled them. On July 31st, 2018, during a public hearing at the Department of State on the Request of the Government of the People’s Republic of Algeria for U.S. import restrictions on virtually the entire cultural heritage of Algeria, representatives of exiled Middle Eastern Jews urged the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the President to withhold these import restrictions. Algeria has failed to meet the criteria set for restrictions under the Cultural Property Implementation Act. It would be unconscionable for the United States to give the Algerian government authority and control over the property of its oppressed and exiled Jewish and Christian citizens. As MOU agreements demand that the governments themselves show they are taking measures to preserve and protect the heritage in their own countries, North African and Middle Eastern countries, including Algeria, requesting MOUs should be asked to present an inventory of remaining Jewish moveable and non-movable patrimony and an account of what they are actively doing with respect to the care of synagogues, cemeteries and other sites and items of Jewish and Christian heritage. The recent statement by the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, Joan Polashick, that the State Department is working on an additional five MOUs with Middle Eastern and North African nations makes it essential that a policy is in place that protects Jewish and Christian heritage by explicitly excluding them from any import restrictions and rejecting any state claims to individual and communal property. We ask that the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Heritage adheres to the limitations set by Congress under the Cultural Property Implementation Act by denying broad, excessive import restrictions to nations that have neither valued nor cherished the ancient heritage of Jewish, Christian, and other minority peoples. We further request that all future MOUs from the region include provisions that list and name specific Jewish and Christian items to be excluded from the restricted list of items. Such items include: Torah scrolls, Torah cases, Jewish prayer books, Jewish manuscripts, religious ceremonial articles, and all Jewish ritual and prayer materials that include Hebrew inscriptions or references to original Jewish owners – whether they be individuals or Jewish institutions. It is more important than ever for the United States to stand in solidarity and defense of Christian, Jewish and other religious minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, to ensure that these living communities are not deprived of their rich cultural heritage. Thank you for your attention. We look forward to remaining in communication with the State Department on this crucial issue. Thank you, Gina Waldman Sarah LevinPresident, JIMENA Executive Director, JIMENA Organizations: A.A. Society The American Sephardi Federation ADL: The Anti-Defamation League B’nai B’rith International Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Harif: UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa Historical Society of Jews from Egypt Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF) JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa JJAC: Justice for Jews from Arab Countries The Lawfare Project Morial: French Association of Algerian Jews Sephardic Educational Center Sephardic Legacy Project Simon Wiesenthal Center World Jewish Congress North America Yemenite Jewish Federation of America
The Cultural Property Advisory Committee of the State Department will meet on July 31, 2018,to review an Memorandum of Understand (MOU) request from Algeria which would validate Algerian claims to confiscated Jewish property and heritage. Under the Cultural Property Implementation Act, our government has been signing similar MOUs – agreements between the US and foreign governments that blockade the entry of property to the USA. The MOUs claim to be about looting, but their broad scope and limited evidence of success suggests their real impact is providing a legal vehicle to legitimize foreign confiscations and wrongful ownership claims. Legitimate efforts to curb looting are essential, but they must be targeted to preserve archaeological resources, and not to disguise the brazen property confiscations of tyrants. US cultural agreements with Arab governments are based on a flawed premise – that Jewish cultural property constitutes the national heritage of Arab countries. In fact, Jewish cultural property in Arab countries was expropriated from private homes, schools, and synagogues. No such agreement should be made with a state where Jews were subjected to state-sanctioned Anti-Semitism, Nuremberg like laws and in some cases ethic-cleansing. Below are links to comments and testimonials urging the state department to reject the Algerian MOU request. Further background can be read here. Gina Bublil-Waldman, JIMENA President Carole Basri, Fordham University Law School Adjunct Professor & Jewish Refugee Advocate Sarah Levin, JIMENA Executive Director The Association of Art Museum Directors The Committee for Cultural Policy and Global Heritage Alliance Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association
Below is Kate Fitz Gibbon’s statement to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the US Department of State during their July 19th session to discuss the Libyan government’s request for a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The requested MOU provides legal recognition of Libyan claims to Jewish property and bars entry of Libyan Jewish patrimony to the USA, setting a dangerous precedence for neighboring countries to follow suit. Kate Fitz Gibbon is a practicing attorney and the Executive Director of Committee for Cultural Policy, a 501c3 that was formed to address an urgent need – to reform UC cultural policy to become transparent, accountable, and consistent with public benefit. We thank her for advocating for Libyan Jews. “I am speaking today on behalf of ATADA (Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association), a nonprofit professional organization representing art dealers, private collectors, and museums that exhibit ethnographic and tribal art. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. Written submissions by ATADA, which I represent, the AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors), and others have laid out just how the Libyan request fails to meet the four criteria mandated by Congress. They have also addressed Libya’s lack of qualification for an emergency Agreement. Even the official Summary, which tries to put the best face possible on the Libyan request, makes clear that the losses taking place in Libya are due to negligence and deliberate destruction enabled by the Libyan government, or its current lack of a government, not to an international market for looted Libyan artifacts. This is a clear failure to meet Determinations 1 and 2. As time is very short, I want to focus on two elements of the request. The 7-day time frame for public comment has meant that American Jewish organizations were unaware of this request in time to comment or speak. I have been given additional information by a number of US Jewish organizations in the last few days. They are outraged that this request would grant the Libyan government rights to Jewish property and bar entry of Libyan Jewish patrimony to the USA. This MOU would not only set a dangerous precedent for neighboring countries, it will place both the community and private property of Libyan Jews, seized by the repressive governments that drove them out of the country after thousands of years, in the hands of yet another intolerant and destructive regime. The jeopardy of pillage is from the various Libyan factions, including the current government in Tripoli. This deliberate destruction of the Jewish community has a long history. Considering only the 20th and 21st century, this includes massive seizures of property, concentration camps in the desert, forced emigrations, and Jews having to abandon virtually all assets. Libya’s Jewish population has been reduced from about 40,000 individuals in the early 20th century to just one in 2003, an elderly lady found in a nursing home and airlifted to Italy. This regime has denied access to ancestral homes and synagogues in the recent post-Gaddafi years as well, as David Gerbi discovered when he returned to try and rebuild a synagogue, which was shut against him after two days. Dr. Gerbi also wrote to me about boxes of Jewish bones filling a room in Benghazi. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a photo of the beach at Tripoli with buildings in the background. This is called the Bourge El Fatah, and it is built on top of an ancient Jewish cemetery. The bones and headstones were just thrown aside in construction. This MOU will be an opportunity to continue to desecrate, not preserve, Jewish artifacts. There is a second issue to address with the Libyan Request. The CPIA requires that ethnographic material be 'important to the cultural heritage of a people because of its distinctive characteristics or comparative rarity.' In no way does Tuareg material from Libya meet congressional criteria. Yet the Libyan government appears to claim ownership and control over Tuareg and Berber ethnological materials up to 1911, the date of Italian colonization. There are perhaps 3 million Tuareg living in eight Saharan countries. Of these, only 15-20 thousand live in Libya. A tiny percentage. Of the over 2900 Tuareg artifacts in the Musee Du Quai Branly in Paris, only 4 items are identified as coming from Libya: a tambourine, a talisman and 2 photographs. The Tuareg are traders. They make household goods and jewelry. They trade with other Saharans and sell these folk crafts in Europe and the UK as well as the U.S. There is no meeting of Determinations 1 or 3. There is no way to distinguish between a Tuareg item of 50-100 years of age that would be lawful to import under an MOU and one 120 years old that would be unlawful, or to tell apart Libyan items from those of other Saharan nations. The 1983 CPIA, used as Congress intended, is a tool that can preserve at-risk archaeological sites and benefit the US public by encouraging cultural exchange. Neither interest is served in the Libyan request, which places nationalism, a colonial concept if there ever was one, above both humanitarian concerns and the public interest.” To read more about this issue please click here.
Students at Jewish Community High School of the Bay in JIMENA garb during Mizrahi Commemoration Month Community Outreach, Engagement and Education JIMENA is very proud to have produced 96 events nation-wide, which reflected the diversity, multiculturalism, and religious pluralism of the Jewish people. This year was unique, in that it was our first time outreaching to the children and grandchildren of Jews born in North Africa and the Middle East. We effectively empowered many of them to assert their family histories and their culture by becoming JIMENA speakers, ambassadors, and joining one of our two young adult committees. JIMENA led two community-wide Moroccan Mimouna Celebrations that engaged a total of 500 individuals in San Francisco. We also co-sponsored a young adult Mimouna in Los Angeles. In the Spring and Summer, JIMENA led the following programs as part of our San Francisco Young Adult Engagement series: Our Stories: A Showcase of Jewish Pluralism, Millennial Reflections: A Celebration of Young Sephardic Life, Taste of Sefarad: Cooking and Storytelling from North African Jewish Kitchens, and Henna Gatherings. We brought Erella Teitler’s exhibit, “Not Forgotten” to San Francisco and displayed it the at Oshman Family JCC, San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, and Congregation Beth Shalom. Produced a Moishe House micro-grant program, which enabled 25 Moishe Houses to lead their own unique Mizrahi commemoration program. JIMENA’s Los Angeles chapter continued to grow as we produced and co-sponsored close to 20 events and created a Young Adult LA Committee and an LA Advisory Board. Event highlights included: a Human Rights Series we produced at Congregation Kol Ami, A Taste of the East with Reboot, multi-generational, community-wide Shesh Besh Touranment, and Mizrahi Shabbat dinners at USC and UCLA. Oral History and Digital Experience Project Our central website received over 300,000 website hits per month and earned #1 Google rankings for our Arabic JIMENA Experience websites, thus educating hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide. This past year the focus of the Oral History and Digital Experience Program was on developing our relationship with Ben Gurion University in order for them to serve as an official repository for JIMENA’s Oral History archive. Moving forward, all of JIMENA’s Oral History content will be preserved in perpetuity at The Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University. Together with BGU, we oversaw the work of an international team of seven grad-student interns who were responsible for transcribing, abstracting, and adding our videos to BGU’s server and YouTube page. Work on College Campuses In the last year JIMENA led over 40 programs, reaching an estimated 4,000 students on the following campuses: American Jewish University, American University, Ben Gurion University, Bar Ilan University, Capitol University, Chico State University, Eastern Carolina University, George Washington University, Kent State University, Loyola University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pace University, San Francisco State University, Santa Monica College, University of California Berkeley, University of California Davis, University of California Los Angeles, University of Nebraska, University of Nevada Las Vegas, University of North Carolina, University of Oregon, University of Southern California. JIMENA content, like The Forgotten Refugees film and information from the JIMENA Digital Experience Project, was distributed and utilized by students on over 100 college campuses JIMENA had an international team of college interns who executed a number of impactful projects on their respective campuses including: a French Social Media initiative (USF) and an Oral History transcription and abstraction project for a group of BGU interns from sub-Sahara Africa and China. Campus programs included JIMENA Speaker talks, henna gatherings, Mizrahi cooking classes, Mizrahi Shabbat dinners, Mimouna, and Forgotten Refugees presentations. Our work on college campuses was done in careful partnership with the following organizations: Hillel International, Chabad, Jewish Agency for Israel, Students Supporting Israel (SSI), Alpha Epsilon Pi, and a number of other grassroots, student-led campus organizations. Testimonial from Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel Advocacy and International Work JIMENA led a number of national and international campaigns including: Campaign to bar entry of Anti-Semitic Iranian regime sponsored comedian, Akbar Abadi; Nakba Museum Campaign; initiatives to support Yezidis and religious minorities in the Middle East and North Africa; Voices of the Middle East: Iran project, Sephardic Advocacy Engagement at AIPAC Policy Conference, Save the Iraqi Archive Campaign, Haj Amin Al-Husseini and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World campaign, inclusion of Mizrahi heritage in Israeli Curriculum and various redress initiatives. In conjunction with Israel’s November 30th Day to Honor Jewish Refugees from the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran, JIMENA lead successful Mizrahi Commemoration Month programming at over 30 college campuses, 20 Moishe Houses, synagogues, and community centers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. We also helped develop, publish and distribute a Mizrahi Remembrance Month Curriculum for Jewish High Schools. In 2015, JIMENA leadership worked closely with Minister for Social Equality, Gila Gamliel, and with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure effective implementation of the Day of Commemoration Much of our advocacy work could not have been done without the support of our partners. We owe the utmost gratitude to the following organizations for their continued friendship and support: Israel Association of Jews from Arab Countries, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, Harif: UK Association of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, 30 Years After, Sephardic Education Center, Jewish Agency for Israel, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, B’nai Brith International, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iranian American Jewish Federation, Yezidis International, and Coptic Solidarity. For photographs please visit our facebook photo albums or our JIMENA_Voice istagram account. #jimenavoice